ABOUT
Smart discussion of the latest science and news on toxins in your food, water, and air, and what government agencies should be doing to protect public health. Written by EWG staff.
DONATE TO EWG!
Help us protect your health and environment! Please donate $5 to EWG today.
GET EWG'S TIPS & ACTION ALERTS
Sign Up here to receive email updates and tips from EWG and stay informed on the issues that matter most to you.
ENVIROBLOG VIA EMAIL
Join EWG's live chat with Chef Ann Cooper
School lunch: More fruits & veggies, please!
Texas Schools are Drilling for Dollars
Why do blowouts take so long to fix?
SEARCH ENVIROBLOG
FEATURED
Support the 2010 Safe Cosmetics Act. It's Urgent.
Why, oh why is there plastic in my aluminum water bottle?
Cell phone radiation series - Part 2: 8 Ways to reduce your exposure
Test Your Knowledge of Cosmetics Safety: 8 Myths Debunked
EWG's Tips for Parents: The Series
EWG's Tips to avoid BPA exposure
EWG on TV
Cutting the Pork from U.S. Farm Bill
Sunscreen safety & DC drinking water
Perchlorate in people, kids' personal care products & plastics, and sunscreen
BPA in baby formula & safe cosmetics
What can I do about fluoride in my water?
What is new carpet treated with? What can I do?
Are stainless steel water bottles safe?
Is mineral-based makeup safer?
PEOPLE TALKING TOXICS
TALK TO US
Did we miss something? Email Enviroblog.
« More organophosphates please, Mom! | Main | Summer's here: What are you doing to protect your skin? »
On Pesticides: Canadian Bylaws and American Lawn Flags
By Sandra Steingraber, Ph. D., Ecologist, author, cancer survivor, and internationally recognized expert on the environmental links to cancer and reproductive health
The smell of lawn chemicals is as dependable a harbinger of spring as robins and lilacs. Not in big parts of Canada, where many municipalities and provinces have opted to abolish the cosmetic use of pesticides on the grounds that the links between pesticide exposure and childhood cancer are too troubling to ignore. So, how come we're still using them?
DDT is now so universally used that in most minds the product takes on the harmless aspect of the familiar. ~ Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
Harmless aspect of the familiar was the phrase that leaped into my mind when I watched a scantily clad woman - the day was hot and sunny - lie down in a green sward of grass in front of the Women's Center on the campus of DePauw University in Indiana. Next to her waved a small yellow flag that warned passers-by to keep off the grass as it had just been sprayed with pesticides.
I guess the word irony might also have applied. On the other side of the flag, a card table was piled high with copies of my book, Living Downstream, which, among other topics, discusses the dangers of lawn chemicals. The books were for sale. I was positioned up on the porch, encouraged by my faculty host to chat with students, drink punch, and sign books as part of an informal reception before my all-campus Earth Day lecture.
Yes, I intervened. The reclining woman seemed bewildered by my concern for her, pointing out that the yellow flags are so ubiquitous that no one notices them. She reluctantly promised to shower and launder her clothes before attending the evening's lecture.
No flags wave from the lawns in many parts of Canada. Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island - and many cities across the rest of the nation - have expressly outlawed the cosmetic use of pesticides. Within these provinces and municipalities, the use of synthetic pesticides to improve the appearance of lawns and, in some places, gardens is now illegal.
Indeed, Earth Day 2009 - one year ago - was the deadline for hardware and garden stores across Ontario to remove approximately 250 chemical bug and weed killers from their shelves. Beginning on that ceremonial day, as part of a commitment to decrease toxic exposures to chemicals linked to cancer, residents of Ontario could no longer use pesticides on lawns and gardens, and stores could not sell them.
And just how are the organically managed lawns of Canada faring? During my last visit to Toronto, I can't say I noticed any barren, grub-infested yards or playgrounds abandoned to thistles - my grandfather the farmer called them Canada thistles for a reason, right? - and I'm happy to report that all the French-style gardens still looked lovely.
What I did notice is that the legislation outlawing lawn chemicals has become familiar enough to Torontonians to merit an offhand mention in the complimentary magazine in my hotel room. This lushly illustrated guidebook not only trumpeted the city's best restaurants and hottest nightclubs, it also welcomed visitors with the following reassurance:
All green spaces are pesticide-free. In 2004, Toronto became the largest municipality in the world to ban cosmetic use of lawn and garden pesticides. The Sierra Club of Canada reports a clear link between pesticide use and breast cancer; many other studies have shown the dangers to children from chemical exposure to pesticides.
That is precisely the worrisome body of evidence that I review in Living Downstream. When I speak about leukemia and lawn chemicals here in the United States, people in my audiences sometimes tell me that the subject matter is too depressing for them to even contemplate. But in parts of Canada, doing something about it is a selling point for tourism.
The Canadian and U.S. governments have the same scientific evidence available to them - indeed much of the data on children's exposure to pesticides and its possible contribution to pediatric brain tumors were generated on this side of the border. So why have so many jurisdictions in one nation chosen, as a response to that data, abolition of cosmetic pesticides while jurisdictions in the other rely on dinky yellow flags?
In Canada, the ban on nonessential uses of pesticides began with old-fashioned citizen activism in the small village of Hudson in Quebec. (This story is documented in the documentary film A Chemical Reaction.) Upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada, that city's ban was replicated in other communities. Such bans are supported by the Canadian Cancer Society (a counterpart of our American Cancer Society) and by the Ontario College of Family Physicians. Research partially funded by the OCFP concluded, in 2007, that the weight of the evidence indicates a "positive relationship between exposure to pesticides and the development of some cancers, particularly in children ... The authors of the research recommend that exposures to all pesticides be reduced."
Benefit of the doubt goes to children, not to chemicals.
By contrast, federal agencies, mainstream cancer charities, and physicians' organizations south of the border have been more circumspect about the role of involuntary exposures to inherently toxic substances in creating health threats. Why the demurral? Is it because the impulse in the United States is to treat public health threats as issues of personal choice? Thus, lawn flags instead of bylaws?
I don't know the answer here. Let's ask. The mothers of children with leukemia can go first. (A 2009 study found higher levels of household pesticides in urine samples collected from children with leukemia and from their mothers than in the urine of mother-child pairs living in households unaffected by leukemia. Not all of the mothers of these child cancer patients used pesticides themselves. In fact, most did not.)
When it's my turn, I'd like to pose the following query to the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, and the American Medical Association: I spent a lot of time this spring walking by yellow flags planted in the green lawns of college campuses, on my way to Earth Day lectures. When I pointed the flags out to my student escorts, most of them just shrugged. Meanwhile, to the north, 77 percent of Canadians already benefit from pesticide bans, Environment Minister Sterling Belliveau introduced a bill last week to ban the sale and use of nonessential pesticides for lawn care in Nova Scotia, and momentum grows for a province-wide ban on lawn chemicals in British Columbia. Why can't we do things like this?
Sandra Steingraber is the author of Living Downstream, newly published in second edition by Merloyd Lawrence Books/Da Capo Press to coincide with the release of the documentary film adaptation. This essay is one in a weekly series by Sandra exploring how the environment is within us.
Sandra: thank you for this article, it is very interesting and informative. I own an organic boutique in Mequon, Wisconsin and I am thinking about petitioning the City to consider a ban on pesticide use for lawns. Do you have a link or copy of the language used for the Canadian lawn pesticide bans? I would like to get an idea of how this would be worded and implemented. It would be helpful to show to the City Attorney if we get the stage of writing an ordinance. Thank you.
I more than agree...
If you created a "share" tool, i would post it on my facebook, this little much i can do right now, would love to too.
Thanks,
Gohar
You're making me really envy Canadians here. There are a lot of pesticides I'd love to see banned. As you said, the connection to cancer shouldn't be ignored. But we seem pretty willing to do so.
Dr. Steingraber,
Thank you for speaking out on this issue.
As you point out, the use of lawn chemicals cannot be reduced to a matter of personal choice as it is impossible to escape from your neighbors' lawn fumes or to avoid walking through regularly sprayed public spaces.
These chemicals drift through the air, run-off into our shared waterways, they settle into to our clothes, stick to our shoe soles, and absorb through our skin and nasal passages.
I, for one, can't spare any further exposure to such sorts of toxins. Here in Florida the Sierra club and a number of local governments are fighting the good fight quite admirably, but corporate money and our outdated "Single Member Plurality" voting system aren't mixing well for us.
I think we need to modernize to an "Open Party List" version of "Proportional Representation" voting, which would allow the US citizenry enough control over our ballots and election outcomes to push back on corporate money and manipulation of our government's regulatory processes.
You can find more information on Proportional Representation Voting Systems (and how this type of reform will help American's combat issues like cosmetic pesticide use) at Dr. Douglas Amy's website, the "PR Library."
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/prlib.htm
Best Regards,
Jennifer Milam
Jacksonville, FL
What a great post, Dr. Steingraber! Thank you for sharing this... I didn't know all that in detail information about Canada. So interesting they've been able to make the connection with pesticides and put change into action while we've become desensitized to the yellow flags.
Maria Rodale's recent book, Organic Manifesto, talks a lot about this concept as well. She takes it a step past lawn care and discusses what these chemicals are doing to our food and our health as well.
I'll make sure to check out your book, as you should check out Maria's!
Thank you for writing this book. I feel most people have no clue as to what goes into their bodies from environmental chemicals. All they care about is how green their lawns are.
You never hear about this through the MSM. Kudos to Canada for caring about the health and welfare of it's citizens unlike the U.S.
I have had a suspicion of pesticides for years, linking it to cancer in pets and humans. Looking forward to reading your book.
Dr. Steingraber,
Thank you! Exactly. If Canada can enact laws banning pesticides, why can't the U.S. do the same?
When I walk by those yellow flags on my way into my doctor or dentist, it makes me so angry. I wish the U.S. would ban pesticides the way Canada has.
You're right that most people ignore those dinky little flags.
A friend of mine was appalled one day when she had to walk by yellow flags in order to enter the cancer center where she was receiving radiation!! She was livid!
Nothing like spraying the lawn of a cancer center with cancer-causing agents! I am disgusted that all we've been able to get in the U.S. is those dinky flags. This has to change.
Jeanne
Thank you for this important post. Let's follow Canada's example.
One of the nicest things here in Toronto since the banning of cosmetic pesticides is the increase of butterflies and birds in the city. Now wildflowers grow in the parks again adding to the city's beauty.
Hi there,
It is FANTASTIC to see Canada and Toronto being talked about so positively for our pesticice ban. As a long time native plant gardener living in Toronto, I couldn't be happier that my hometown has made this kind of progress. Still, don't go thinking that everyone here is happy about it. Lots of folks grumble about dandelions in the park. I say embrace the dandelion. Kids sure do!
Michael, you were looking for information about Toronto's pesticide ban. Here is a link to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, which provides TONS of detail on the law, including the legislation itself. The provincial ban replaced all municipal legislation in effect when it became law last year.
http://www.ene.gov.on.ca/en/land/pesticides/
People will get used to dandelions. They're much more pleasant than a toxic stew linked to cancer.
Good luck!
Nadia.
Here is a similar article that has suggestions on reducing lawn size and grass lawn alternatives. Enjoy:
http://www.findyourcloud.com/2010/06/15/mowing-mania-the-weird-american-obsession/